


One Long Road and a Broken Bridge

by ijemanja



Category: Seachange (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-22
Updated: 2007-01-22
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1860270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/pseuds/ijemanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only so many soldiers come home. This one does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Long Road and a Broken Bridge

When Diver Dan returns to Pearl Bay, Laura's nervous breakdown is a surprise to no one.

Certainly not to Max, who watches her pace with the sort of calm demeanour he knows she finds infuriating. Which is, naturally, why he does it in the first place.

"Does he know about this? What have you told him?"

He stops her mid-pace and peels their sleeping son away from her shoulder. Just in case.

"Oh, you know," he shrugs as he shifts the baby into the crook of an arm, "Something like, 'Shacked up with your ex, hope you don't mind, lots of love, Max. P.S. She's up the duff.'"

She gives him a withering look. "I'm glad you find this so amusing."

What he really finds amusing is that this is the exact message he'd sent Dan months ago.

"There, there, Laura," he says comfortingly. "Just think of all the people he'll have been shacking up with all this time."

Laura decides to go and talk it over with Heather and Meredith instead.

Once she's gone, he addresses his unconscious audience. "What do you reckon, mate? The Deluxe Continental for me again tonight?"

Kevin's sympathetic in these situations - usually only charges him half price.

*

"Does ah," Dan hems, squinting out over the water, which is blue and wet and just as he left it, "Does she know about this?"

Max notices two things. First, that this is the exact same thing Laura had asked him, pronouns reversed. And second, that Dan probably isn't talking about the state of local fishing (about which he, personally, knows very little either).

"Hmm, glaring silence. I think I'll take that as a no," Dan says as he moves off. "Coming?"

He's heading up the path in the direction of Laura and the baby and the couch he's going to sleep on. That's the third thing Max notices.

*

Laura gets that big smile on her face like she's thinking about diving under the table and says, "Come in. How are you?"

She's been practising it in her head all day, he can tell.

"Good, good," Dan replies.

"Told him he can stay on the couch," Max puts in.

"Good," she says brightly.

"Yes," Dan says. "Just passing through, really. And Max misplaced the boatshed, so."

"Oh, the boatshed," Laura's smile is suddenly more genuine, because Dan has said the magic words - just passing through. "Well, we tried."

*

She starts hissing at him as soon as Dan gets up to go to the bathroom.

"I used to sleep with him, you know. In there." She points. "On that bed. What's the matter with you?"

"He's family, Laura," he tells her.

" _Whose_?"

He's Max's family, or feels like it anyway, which makes him Laura's now, too. Whether she wants to claim him or not.

"Ours," he says, and watches her try to come up with a comeback for that.

*

There are times when words fail him.

He's never been able to find the perfect phrasing to capture the square of Laura's jaw, or the way her head fits against his chest, or what being a dad means. Elena always accused him of being a romantic but that's not his problem - he'll never be able to put pen to paper and spell out grief, and there's nothing romantic about that.

When he wrote about war he found every sentence lacked something and maybe that's what made him chase it wherever it went, looking to somehow fill in the gaps.

He looks around a table, at Laura and Dan and a kid falling asleep in his bouncy chair, and his fingers itch even though he knows he's looking at one more grand failure.

*

Laura, after half a bottle of wine and almost a year of sobriety, looks to be feeling a bit more accommodating. She watches Dan standing the baby up on his knee and says, "How did the two of you meet, it was overseas wasn't it? Somewhere exotic, I hope."

"It was in Brisbane, actually," Dan says. "In a gay bar."

"I was there to meet a contact," Max feels the need to clarify.

Dan just shrugs. "Don't look at me, I was stuck in Brisbane. I was just looking for a drink."

"Why," Laura wonders, staring into space, "Am I somehow not surprised by this." She lifts her glass to her lips again. "So what, being the only two straight men in a roomful of homosexuals bonded you on some primal level?"

"Something like that. Max brought me home with him, anyway."

"To Pearl Bay," she fills in.

"Yeah, that too."

*

They spend the night in the Deluxe Continental.

The only place to sleep that's more than five feet long is the main bed, so they lie there side by side in the dark and it's far more amusing than it is awkward.

"Welcome back, weary traveller. How's your homecoming so far? Warm and friendly?"

"Actually, this is just how I thought it'd be," Dan says.

*

He'd like to blame it on the search for the perfect story, some idealised notion of the truth and how it must be told. But first there were letters from Dan, from Asia and Europe and wherever he ended up. Always somewhere else to be, and Max wanted to be there.

This is what he remembers.

The drive back down the coast, the long, slowly curving highway, the vinyl hot against his shoulders and the air-conditioning that never worked. The radio crackling, the sand in his hair.

The way a wetsuit drags at your skin when you pull it off, this is how Dan's mouth felt on Max's shoulder. The car like an oven before nine am when they came up from the beach, how the sound of the surf and the wind dropped away when the doors shut like a cone of silence descending.

He remembers salt and vinegar chips on the gear box between them, an empty rest stop and sucking salt from his fingers, and then tasting it all over again on Dan's skin.

He remembers being young and inexperienced in just about everything, and not nearly as talented as he thought he was, but wanting, needing to learn.

"You do it like you've got something to prove," Dan would say and this is what he remembers, when _everything_ felt like that.

*

The sound of a screaming infant coming closer and closer wakes him from a doze - not that even the deepest sleep would have withstood the noise - and he can hear Laura swearing as she struggles with the door.

Dan flips on one of the small lights over the bed.

"You know he won't take a bottle from me, and I had that wine, I can't breastfeed," Laura explains once she makes it inside, sitting down to hand him the crying, squirming bundle.

He sits up and moves down the bed to hang his legs over the end. "Come on, it's not that bad." Cajoling doesn't have much of an effect but finally the bottle is accepted, the wailing stops, and there's a collective sigh of relief.

The mattress shifts under him and he looks around to see Laura stretching out in his place. It's a gesture of acceptance, he recognises. Acceptance, or maybe exhaustion - whichever it is, it makes for a peaceful tableau. Then Laura opens her mouth.

"You're both very blasé about this, but I can't imagine you were back then. This isn't like Miranda turning up with a girlfriend, people weren't as accepting as they are now."

"Miranda has a girlfriend? Didn't mention that at dinner."

"Name's Mindy," Max says. "Yeah, they're thinking of starting a band - they've already got the names."

"Oh, well that's the most important part. Angus, Bucket and I never had a good name, that's why we never got things off the ground."

"Mindy," Laura breaks in, "Is a very nice young woman." This opinion having more to do with her pending law degree than her pink hair and piercings, Max reflects. "Which isn't the point," Laura adds.

He reaches back to pat her legs. "Different times, Laura. Different people."

"Not that different," she scoffs. "I'm not behind the times, you know. I'm only two years older than you, Max."

"Two?" Dan says mildly.

"Three," Max corrects her.

"Two and a half," Laura corrects him. "So whenever I grew up, the two of you can't have been far behind, that's all I'm saying. I wasn't supposed to be the jealous one, you know."

"Sorry, Laur," he offers, and is glad his back is turned so he doesn't have to hide his smile.

She ignores him.

"Why did you come back?" she says, more quietly, to Dan alone this time.

"Oh you know. Everyone has to come home sometimes, don't they?"

"Well, I'm glad you didn't stay away." Max can hear her smiling, and then the sigh in the dark as she addresses the universe again. "Why does everything have to be so bloody complicated?"

Dan, as always, knows what to say. "Is anyone else feeling a little bit sleepy?"

"I am," Max says, being, of course, the only one currently not positioned comfortably.

"Is this bed bigger than ours?" Laura says, neck craning around curiously. "I've never actually been in here before. It's quite roomy."

If he can't do justice to any of the big things, maybe he isn't much of a writer. At least he is one. At least he can try. And so, perched on a corner of the mattress, holding a bottle in one hand and patting a nappy-clad bum with the other, Max tells himself a story that will never be written down.


End file.
